Bradley Levinson Research Collection

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/2022/25629

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Browsing Bradley Levinson Research Collection by Author "Sutton, Margaret"

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    Afterword: Implications for educational policy and practice
    (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) Levinson, Bradley A. U.; Sutton, Margaret
    This book provides rich resources for teaching and learning about broad social and cultural issues in education. At the same time, it raises a question often heard by instructors in educational foundations courses, and that is, "What is the practical relevance of this material?" -to policy formation, curriculum design, school administration, classroom pedagogy, and so on. This is a fair question, but not an east one to answer. Social and cultural analysis in education is often more akin toe "basic" than "applied" research, to use a distinction common in the natural sciences. The primary purpose of this work is to clarify and expand existing insights, illuminate new concepts, raise new questions, and the reframe perspectives on long-standing issues. To be sure, a few of the authors in this book -notably several in section III- do offer specific ideas for improving educational policy and practice that flow from their research. Most, however, leave the reader to draw out such ideas in the context of his or her own specific experiences and understandings. This kind of contingent "application" is compatible with the interpretive enterprise in which the authors are engaged.
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    An Anthropological Approach to Education Policy as a Practice of Power: Concepts and Methods
    (Springer, 2020) Levinson, Bradley A. U.; Winstead, Teresa; Sutton, Margaret
    Since the introduction to our 2001 edited volume, Policy as Practice: Toward a Comparative Sociocultural Analysis of Education Policy (Sutton and Levinson 2001), we have continued to sketch the foundational postulates of a critical anthropological approach to the study of education policy. In 2009, we expanded and deepened many of the points from that introduction, more systematically introducing and defining theoretical terms, and providing a bit of their intellectual genealogy (Levinson et al. 2009). We also discussed certain methodological considerations that accompanied the theoretical approach, and we argued for a type of engaged educational anthropology that goes beyond the mere “study” of education policy to its democratization and transformation. Here we provide an updated synopsis of our approach.
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    Theoretical Foundations for a Critical Anthropology of Education Policy
    (Routledge/Taylor Francis, 2018) Levinson, Bradley A.; Winstead, Teresa; Sutton, Margaret
    In this chapter we revisit and update the foundational postulates of our previous work, articulating a critical practice approach to the study of education policy. We provide what we hope is a more succinct and accessible statement of our approach, placing emphasis on three particular elements: 1) the historical, holistic, and cross-cultural insights that an anthropological lens brings to our understanding of policy as a practice of power; 2) the centrality of a non-dualistic and agentic conception of appropriation in social practice, and 3), an emphasis on social scientific knowledge produced democratically as much for various civic publics as for the scholarly or authorized “policymaking” communities. Along the way we highlight how our particular contribution to the anthropology of education policy, as theoretically informed by practice theory and committed to democratic praxis, has been both challenged and enriched over the last decade and a half.